2021 Judges

Catriona Crowe is former Head of Special Projects at the National Archives of Ireland. She was Manager of the Census Online Project, which placed the Irish 1901 and 1911 censuses online free to access. She is editor of Dublin 1911, published by the Royal Irish Academy in late 2011. She presented the RTE documentaries, Ireland before the Rising, shown in February 2016, and Life After the Rising, shown in January 2019. She regularly reviews for the Irish Times. She is an Honorary President of the Irish Labour History Society, and a former President of the Women’s History Association of Ireland. She is Chairperson of the SAOL Project, a rehabilitation initiative for women with addiction problems, based in the north inner city of Dublin, and also Chairperson of the Inner City Renewal Group, which delivers employment and welfare rights advice and support to the community in the north inner city. She is a member of the Royal Irish Academy.

Roy Foster (Chair) is Emeritus Professor of Irish History at Oxford and Emeritus Professor of Irish History and Literature at Queen Mary University of London. He is the author of many prizewinning books, including Modern Ireland 1600-1972, Paddy and Mr Punch, The Irish Story, Luck and the Irish, the two-volume authorised biography of W.B. Yeats (The Apprentice Mage and The Arch-Poet), Vivid Faces: the revolutionary generation in Ireland 1890-1923 and most recently On Seamus Heaney. He is also a well-known cultural commentator and critic.

Nicholas Grene is Emeritus Professor of English Literature at Trinity College Dublin and a Member of the Royal Irish Academy. His books include The Politics of Irish Drama (Cambridge University Press, 1999),  Yeats's Poetic Codes (Oxford University Press, 2008), Home on the Stage (Cambridge University Press, 2014) and The Theatre of Tom Murphy: Playwright Adventurer (Bloomsbury, 2017).  His most recent book, Farming in Modern Irish Literature will be published by Oxford University Press in August.

Eva Hoffman grew up in Cracow, Poland, before emigrating in her teens to Canada and then the United States. After receiving her Ph.D. in literature from Harvard University, she worked as senior editor and literary critic at The New York Times, and has taught at various British and American universities. Her books, which have been translated widely, include Lost in Translation, Exit Into History, After Such Knowledge and Time, as well as two novels, The Secret and Illuminations.  She has written and presented programmes for BBC Radio and has lectured internationally on subjects of exile, historical memory, cross-cultural relations and other contemporary issues. Her awards include the Guggenheim Fellowship, Whiting Award for Writing, an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and Prix Italia for Radio.  She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and holds an honorary doctorate from Warwick University.  She is currently a Visiting Professor at UCL and lives in London. 

Barbara Haus Schwepcke is the founder of Gingko as well as the chair of its board of trustees. After receiving her doctorate from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) she worked as a journalist (for ZDF German Television and the Süddeutsche Zeitung), as publisher of Prospect Magazine and as an editor for the Harvill Press. In 2003 she founded Haus Publishing.